Many experts on infant learning have suggested that the best way to teach adult language to a tiny baby is to speak as if the infant is another adult – because adult sounds, cadence and tone of voice are what the child ...

We usually consider the scientific study of infection by a virus, bacteria or parasite as the domain of clinical and biomedical research. Surely, the study of a virus invading our cells, hijacking our genetic replication ...

No one can deny that open-heart surgery, where the heart is exposed and the blood is made to bypass it, is one of the most invasive of all medical procedures. Nearly a third of all patients undergoing heart surgery experience ...

A mathematical model that takes into account the number of mutations required to initiate a specific type of cancer to estimate mutational activity, rather than cancer initiation, as the elementary event (as reported in two ...

It turns out that the type, how frequent, and where new mutations occur in the human genome depends on which DNA building blocks are nearby, found researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania ...

The ability to see the direction in which something is moving is vital for survival. Only in this way is it possible to avoid predators, capture prey or, as humans in a modern world, cross a road safely. However, the direction ...

Active surveillance could be a viable alternative to surgery and radiation for select patients with ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, according to a mathematical model developed by researchers at Duke University.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich together with colleagues in Cologne and Zürich have used mathematical models to explain differences in social behaviour associated with autistic personality ...

Mathematical model

A mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system. Mathematical models are used not only in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines (such as physics, biology, earth science, meteorology, and engineering) but also in the social sciences (such as economics, psychology, sociology and political science); physicists, engineers, computer scientists, and economists use mathematical models most extensively. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed 'mathematical modelling' (also modeling).

Eykhoff (1974) defined a mathematical model as 'a representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) which presents knowledge of that system in usable form'.

Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models. These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures.